Go off grid — but first send us your video!

Published 07/12 2010 03:57PM

Updated 06/29 2015 10:31AM

From Green Right Now Reports

Sometimes it makes sense to step off the reservation. And now, people making that big move off the grid can hook-up with like-minded folks (perhaps even before they leave WiFi behind) through the Land Buddy exchange at Off-Grid.net.

Low tech, but handy, off-grid washing machine.

Land Buddy makes it easier to find a piece of real estate where you can set up your fully sustainable existence. You can connect with someone looking to share a spot, or find someone advertising a place to sell. This isn’t Real Estate.com, and it isn’t for everybody, obviously. Even today, with oil wells destroying vast ocean ecosystems and the Arctic melting faster than a popsicle on a barbecue, only a tiny minority of people are moving off grid.

However, the site’s founder and author Nick Rosen says the website enjoys some 75,000 visitors every month. And as the off-grid community grows, so has the technology that’s making it even easier to support an off-grid lifestyle.

Off-Grid.net carries articles about everything you’ll need to exist off the existing power structure, from solar panels to a homemade washing machine constructed from a bucket and a plunger.

Another project of Off-Grid’s is suspiciously high tech. It involves an exchange that will require powering a video recorder and a computer. In the manner of filmmaker Ridley Scott’s plan to document Life in a Day (next week by the way), Off-Grid is asking people to send in video clips of their daily unplugged lives. (And yes, we understand you can operate a video camera while OFF grid, using alternative power generation.)

This offshoot of Life in a Day, aims to collect home video of the various ways people have found to get off commercial electricity. It should be an eye-opener for those of us on the grid, as well as a resource for off-gridders to share best practices.

Here’s a sample submission by a TV producer who moved off-grid in Colorado.